Jo Lardenoye, Stéphane & Alex Depasse.
Barcelona, mon amour
We already used this title in one of our previous report published about this loft. One have to say that the results booked by this loft on the most prestigious race from the calendar are impressive. Very few lofts reached the same level of performance. Since 2005, you could always find them into the national top 100, except during the editions 2010, 2014 & 2015. They won no less than 17 prizes into the national top 100, 8x into the national top 50 and 4 into the national top 10, a fantastic balance when you know that Stéphane and his team are basketting an average of 15 & 20 pigeons for the race. Throughout the years, they built themselves a very strong strain of pigeons able to struggle for the victory in any race above 800 kilometers and mostly on Barcelona. Stéphane had the luck to be greatly helped by the pigeons of his friend Jo Lardenoye, former national winner of Barcelona in The Netherlands who are forming the main basis of the stock. It's also the case of 'Francine' (who received her name in loving memory of the wife of Jo Lardenoye) who is a pure product of the old Lardenoye strain. In addition than the 1st provincial Barcelona, 'Francine' also won the 7th national against 7.301 pigeons.
1. Barcelona provincial - 491 p. '19 1. Interprovincial - 1.045 p. 7. National - 7.301 p. 216. Barcelona national - 7.438 p. '18 516. International - 15.700 p. 344. Narbonne national - 4.272 p. '17 653. International - 10.421 p. 451. Perpignan nat - 3.966 p. '18 568. Agen national - 4.405 p. '17 931. International - 12.007 p. ...
Click here to check the pedigree of 'Francine'.
Very good as well on Perpignan
When you are specialized in the marathon races, Perpignan always come on the second place. Traditionaly, Stéphane is basketting most of his two years old as well as his first pigeons clocked on Barcelona. This year, it was once again a very good edition as the loft booked no less than 3 prizes into the national top 100 while the race was relatively complicated with only one single arrival on the Belgian soil during the first day of flight for Guy & Michael Regnier. But the pigeons from the combination Depasse-Lardenoye also did a good job on the last race of the international calendar.
Click here to check the pedigree of the '221/17', 32th national Perpignan.
Click here to check the pedigree of the '548/16', 89th national Perpignan.
Click here to check the pedigree of the '636/16', 99th national Perpignan.
Big Bird
At the beginning of the 2019 season, we paid a visit to Stéphane and we asked him what was his main ambition for the coming season. He answered without any hesitation that he had in mind a top performance in Barcelona and he hoped to clock on top his 'Big Bird' (BE12-), a pigeon who just booked 4 prizes from his 4 baskettings on this race:
132. Barcelona nat - 7.874 p. '17 296. Barcelona nat - 7.791 p. '15 442. Barcelona nat - 7.693 p. '16 547. Barcelona nat - 7.438 p. '18 ...
He was rightly pretending to win the famous Primus Interpares Barcelona who crown each year the best belgian pigeons able to book five prize in a row on Barcelona. Unfortunately, we all know that we had once again a very tough Barcelona with a lot of pigeons missing everywhere. It is also the case of 'Big Bird' from Stéphane who would have been supposed to enjoy his retirement in the breeding loft. This is the very law of the pigeon sport and everybody has to accept it. And when you fly the international races like Stéphane, you always know there are quite some risks with this kind of pigeons. Anyway, we are convinced that he is already busy to fabricate another pigeon from this caliber.
End of the 2019 chapter
While the chapter of this painful 2019 season is definatively closed in Wagnelée, we assumed they had some ups & downs like in many other lofts. Let us remind you that when you only enter your birds on the international calendar, your chance to shine are only lasting 6 or 7 weeks. It means you only have a very short period to built your name. And this year, everybody had to struggle because many races were quite difficult. But the best ones are always finishing to emerge. That's why we considere Stéphane like a great fancier. Moreover, several other fanciers successfully clocked some early birds on the national races with the Depasse blood. This is how you recognize the greatest strains. We will come back on it on a next report. Congratulations!